1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a head suspension for supporting a magnetic head slider in a magnetic disc drive. In particular, the present invention relates to a method of manufacturing a head suspension, an apparatus for manufacturing a head suspension, and a head suspension, capable of uniformizing a vibration damping effect among head suspensions and improving the productivity of head suspensions.
2. Description of Related Art
A magnetic disk drive such as a hard disk drive (HDD) has a head suspension for supporting a magnetic head slider (hereinafter referred to as “slider”). The head suspension has a base plate, a load beam attached to the base plate, and a flexure attached to the load beam.
The head suspension is affected by turbulence (air vibration) and characteristic vibration to cause an off-track error and a data read/write error.
To suppress the vibration of the head suspension, there is a vibration damping technique that affixes a damper, which consists of a viscoelastic layer and a retaining layer, to the head suspension. This technique is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publications No. 2001-067635, No. 2001-028174, and 2000-339895.
According to a related art, the viscoelastic layer of the damper is interposed between a head suspension and the retaining layer. When the head suspension vibrates and deforms, the viscoelastic layer deforms accordingly, to create frictional motion among viscoelastic molecules. This frictional motion converts vibration energy into thermal energy, to thereby reduce the vibration of the head suspension.
The damper is produced from a damper material that is made of a retaining layer, a viscoelastic layer, and a separator sheet attached to the viscoelastic layer. The damper material is punched into the damper having a required shape. The dampers thus formed are aligned on a liner and a worker picks up each damper on the liner with tweezers and affixes it to an objective part on a head suspension.
Such a manual operation in manufacturing head suspensions varies a vibration damping effect from one head suspension to another and deteriorates the productivity of head suspensions.